Why the Lakers should be wary of Heat

ANAHEIM – The Lakers have the superior size, but the Heat has the more formidable inside game.

Not inside as in down low, but inside as in low down.

Here's the skinny you need to know on the fattened-up Heat: This is a team that will operate all season with the most primal, most potent of motivation. And the drive has nothing to do with proving the LeBron James critics wrong.

No, what really will be pushing the Heat – and should be of most concern to the Lakers – is the collective desire of James, Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh to prove themselvesright.

The difference in semantics is minor; the difference in meaning is not.

In the history of sports, roughly every team ever assembled has been able to rally against some form of evil, congregating outside forces, if not real than conveniently perceived. Little known fact: Goliath privately complained that he never received a lucrative shoe deal.

Us-against-the-world wouldn't be a bigger cliché in sports even if it vowed to take it to the next level and give 110 percent in playing it one game at a time.

The Lakers, the two-time defending champions, the team picked by the NBA's general managers, by Sports Illustrated and even by Wade as favorites to win the title again, could cite the snubs of outsiders.

With all the attention being hung on the Heat, the Lakers could manufacture an avalanche of disrespect, noting how Miami's Big Three already is being celebrated as a celestial body despite possessing fewer rings than Saturn.

It's mostly silly rhetoric. And not unlike the idea advanced by James and Wade that they've been gathering the words of the doubters and how those words will be the fuel firing their very souls this season.

Yeah, right, and nobody gave the New York Yankees and their store-bought roster of multi-millionaires has any chance of surviving the Texas Rangers.

Beware, though, of the athlete intent on justifying himself and his behavior. Watch out for the man driven by validation.

And the Heat has three men – three world-class athletes – determined to show how wise they were, how savvy they were, how right they were. Only one thing closes their case: a championship.

An impetus from the outside always will pale compared to a thrust from the inside.

During their most recent championship incarnation, the Lakers have clung to the belief that it's always about them and nobody else. In other words, they're the best team, and if the best team does what it's supposed to do, the Lakers won't lose.

The notion – much like the Lakers themselves – is partly arrogant and partly admirable. With consecutive titles, it's also wholly true.

But what about now, after all the clatter and happy chaos in Miami?

"Why would anything change?" Lamar Odom said Tuesday, apparently less enthralled by the Heat than, say, ESPN is. "I think it's even more so now. That's not a cocky saying we have. It's the truth."

So the Lakers already are in postseason form, even arriving in Orange County with Andrew Bynum hobbling, just like every other June. They were here to play the Utah Jazz, who, in keeping with our theme, still aren't good enough to beat the Lakers in a series.

And here we were, still a week left in the preseason, on a night when the Lakers were playing in a hockey team's home, basically already writing about the NBA Finals.

Sorry, but that's how it is now in this league. The NBA, until someone else gives us a reason, will be a league of only two teams.

Tallying all the unwarranted technical fouls might be the only way to keep things – by which we mean the Charlotte Bobcats, second quarters and the months of November through March – vaguely interesting.

The Lakers will dominate local news because they are the Lakers, a team capable of making Sasha Vujacic a media sensation.

The Heat will dominate nationally because ESPN, mercifully, has decided to forego the charade. Once a proud network, now a preening infomercial.

"You have to go with what works for you," Odom said. "Every team does the same thing. That mentality has worked well for us. Nothing has happened since the end of last season that would change that, right?"

Well, the Heat has changed, mightily so. And the Lakers have changed a bit, too, pretty much all for the better.

"We've added a few pieces physically, but I think our mentality also is stronger," Odom said. "That's what makes us the team we are, that strong mentality."

The Heat has some strength upstairs, as well. And beware: Inside, the Heat will be the strongest opponent these Lakers have faced yet.